The President highlighted consumer issues several times in his speech tonight. Here's some of the relevant text: On Dodd-Frank and the CFPB: "We believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis, shield families from ruin, and encourage fair competition. Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts and a new consumer watchdog to protect […]
Category Archives: Student Loans
by Maura Dundon (Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Responsible Lending) The sale of Corinthian Colleges (the for-profit college chain that operates Everest, WyoTech, and Heald) to the student loan debt collector ECMC is poised to close today. The deal has raised serious concerns about the fate of Corinthian students and whether the new entity represents […]
Daniel A. Austin of Northeastern has written Student Loan Debt in Bankruptcy: An Empirical Assessment, forthcoming in the Suffolk Law Review. Here's the abstract: Education loan debt in the U.S. recently reached $1.2 trillion. Thirty-nine million Americans — nearly 20% of U.S. households — owe student loans, and student loans are by far the fastest […]
Here. An excerpt: [W]hile there has been attention to aggressive student debt collectors hired by the federal government, the [Educational Credit Management Corporation] does something else: it brings legal challenges to those few who are desperate enough to seek bankruptcy relief. * * * Founded in 1994, just after the largest agency backstopping federal student […]
We've been asked to post the following RFP: Suffolk Law School and the National Consumer Law Center are convening a Research Symposium on Student Loans in Boston on April 10th and 11th. The goal of the Symposium, which is invitation-only, is to bring together the nation’s top experts, including academics, attorneys, industry representatives, consumer advocates, […]
Congress could still act after Monday to reduce rates retroactively, however. The Wall Street Journal has more here. An excerpt: As of Thursday afternoon, Democratic backers of the one-year freeze of current rates said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had promised there would be a vote on July 10 on their bill. An aide […]
Here. Excerpt: First and foremost, basic consumer protections, such as bankruptcy rights and statutes of limitations on the collections of student debt must be restored. There is no justifiable reason why student loans should be treated unlike any other type of debt in America. Next, we must provide a right to borrowers to refinance their […]
Here. Excerpt: The current rate for loans from the window is about 0.75 percent, while students are facing rates of 6.8 percent, Warren said. "In other words, the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks — the same banks that […]
Here's an excerpt from the announcement: Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it is gathering information to develop options for policymakers to make repayment of private student loans more manageable for struggling borrowers. The CFPB has found that private student loan borrowers who wish to pay their loans, but face high payments, […]
Daniel A. Austin of Northeastern has written The Indentured Generation: Bankruptcy and Student Loan Debt, 53 Santa Clara Law Review (forthcoming) Here's the abstract: A generation of Americans has borrowed heavily for their education, and hundreds of thousands of them are deeply in debt. Some 37 million Americans owe a total of approximately $1 trillion […]